Garden Travel: Santa Fe September 30th, 2016

Water water never where so what’s a garden to drink…..

As part of a design conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico I got to visit several private gardens to see how the designers here adapt to the lack of water and harsher environment. Most of the remote homes has some sort of rainwater collection system, whether from the roof with collection in cisterns or with terracing or rock formations to slow the water down when they get it to make sure it all starts on property to replenish the aquifer and sometimes both.( I believe legislation is in place requiring the more remote home to collect water for their landscapes)  Some even had complex grey and even black water reclamation systems for reuse of the onsite “used” water to sustain(and fertilize) their Landscapes. Many used lots of natives and plants from similar environments to decorate their surroundings.
It helps that I was visiting in September after a relatively wet monsoon season so the purple asters and /yellow/ were in full display.
Meadow gardens also added a sense of movement color to the landscapes. Uses of trees to create much needed shade and moisture collection was critical.
The trees ( Cottonwoods, pinon pines, dessert willows as well as exotics Russian olives and elms (which are considered invasive and being removed in many areas but even they were resistant to remove mature trees despite their infamy )) in some cases seem smaller because of the harsher conditions. Temp extremes, minimal water, barren soils. With some effort of soil rejuvenation with terracing, soil-inoculants, compost and mulch some gardens have taken off in short periods of time.

If they had lusher spaces they tended to be in smaller areas with some protection ie courtyards to focus the impact and minimize the water use.
Despite the environment and landscape challenges gardens can be beautiful with properly planning and preparation and plant choices.